Working Class in Victorian Era

The Victorians liked to have their social classes clearly defined. The working class was divided into three layers, the lowest being 'working men' or labourers, then the ‘intelligent artisan’, and above him the ‘educated working man’. In reality, things were not so tidily demarcated.

A skilled London coach-maker could earn up to 5 guineas (£5, 5
shillings) a week - considerably more than most middle class clerks.
This was the top of the working class pyramid. The railways generated
employment for porters and cab-drivers. The London omnibuses needed
16,000 drivers and conductors, by 1861. Conductors were allowed to keep 4
shillings a day out of the fares they collected, and drivers could
count on 34 shillings a week, for a working day beginning at 7.45 and
ending often past midnight. A laborer's average wage was between 20 and
30 shillings a week in London, probably less in the provinces. This
would just cover his rent, and a very sparse diet for him and his
family.

There were around 30,000 street sellers (known as costermongers) in
London, each selling his or her particular wares from a barrow or
donkey-cart. The journalist Henry Mayhew recorded the array of goods for
sale: oysters, hot-eels, pea soup, fried fish, pies and puddings,
sheep’s trotters, pickled whelks, gingerbread, baked potatoes, crumpets,
cough-drops, street-ices, ginger beer, cocoa and peppermint water as
well as clothes, second-hand musical instruments, books, live birds and
even birds nests. Some costermongers specialized in buying waste
products such as broken metal, bottles, bones and ‘kitchen stuff’ such
as dripping, broken candles and silver spoons. Most middle class and
working class households depended on these street sellers, who had
regular predictable beats, and made a fair living.